M+B is pleased to present The Apple Fell, and the Dream Ended, an exhibition of new paintings by Chinese artist Liu Xin. This is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition opens on Saturday, March 28 and runs through April 18, 2026 with an opening reception on Saturday, March 28 from 12 to 6pm.
Drawing from surrealism and symbolism, Liu’s work constructs a dreamlike psychological landscape in which figures move through spaces suspended between reality and illusion. Rooted in literary, mythological, and philosophical references, the paintings explore themes of desire, solitude, redemption, and the quiet tensions of contemporary inner life.
Across the exhibition, Liu depicts solitary figures in moments of introspection—sleeping beneath moons, drifting through landscapes, or curled within circular forms that echo celestial bodies and meditative enclosures. Apples, lotus flowers, dead trees, pearls, and other recurring motifs function as symbolic carriers, weaving together references to Greek mythology, Freudian dream analysis, and the contemplative emptiness of Zen philosophy. Rendered in subdued, low-saturation palettes with restrained brushwork, the paintings evoke a quiet yet unsettled atmosphere, reflecting the psychological condition of individuals navigating an era of information overload while searching for moments of inner clarity.
Several works unfold like fragments of dream narratives. In The Night Is Still Young, a figure kneels beneath a crimson moon, listening to the silence of the cosmos, while in Snow Country the body curls within the intimacy of a bathtub against the cold stillness of a winter landscape. Elsewhere, mythic and philosophical imagery emerges: a woman merges with the branches of a dead tree in Symbiont, evoking the Daoist idea of unity between humanity and nature, while The Whisper of the Moon Goddess imagines sleep as a threshold through which divine messages and subconscious longing quietly emerge.
Across these works, Liu constructs a visual language that merges Eastern philosophical traditions with Western surrealist lineage. Bodies become vessels for psychological states, and landscapes transform into stages for the subconscious. The resulting paintings exist in a suspended realm—neither fully waking nor fully dreaming—where mythology, memory, and meditation converge.
Liu Xin (b. 1996, Weifang, Shandong, China) received a BFA from the Experimental Art Department at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2021 and completed an MFA in Intermedia Art at the same institution in 2024. His practice draws from literature, mythology, and dream imagery to explore the symbolic and emotional structures of the human psyche.